With the prestige you get from racking up achievements in Xbox 360 games, a commonly asked question from fans is, “is there an easy way, or a secret to getting achievement points?” A quick search online will probably lead you to a few people trying to sell you guides that claim to have some deep, dark secrets on how to get easy achievement points. Are they for real? Yes and no I suppose.

No, they’re not going to detail some magnificent magic button combination that gives you free points, or link you to a bot you can download into your 360 to play the games for you. The truth is, certain games have easier achievements than others (those this may also depend on your skill or lack thereof in certain genres), so if you’re sole motivation is to gain achievement points, then picking the right games will go a long way towards helping you do so quickly.

The other thing to note when hunting down achievements is that using game specific cheat codes while playing the game will often block you from obtaining any achievements for that play-through. Some codes may block you permanently from getting an achievement, such as if an achievement is given for unlocking a character, but you used a code to unlock that character first.

If there truly is a secret, or cheat to unlocking achievements, it comes from multiplayer achievements, which many dislike for this very reason. Say an achievement is awarded for blowing up an opponent with a grenade 10 times in an online match.

You and a buddy mutually stand there and let each other chuck grenades at your feet until you’ve both been blown to smithereens 10 times. Hardly a rewarding way to accomplish an achievement, but to each his own.

Remember, there’s a fine line between everything. Having a good number of points may make you appear to be a skilled and well rounded gamer, but going out of your way to rack up a massive amount may begin to make you look like that cliché nerdy gamer who lives in a basement and spends way too much time gaming, while neglecting hygiene, social encounters, etc. So keep that in mind as you strive onward to achievement point glory. Happy gaming.